


Blood Love

by VerdantMoth



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Assassins, Consensual Infidelity, Established Relationship, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, Infidelity, M/M, Possessive Behavior, Protectiveness, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-05
Updated: 2019-03-05
Packaged: 2019-11-12 14:30:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18012632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VerdantMoth/pseuds/VerdantMoth
Summary: Loki leaves them at a part and he goes to a seedy bar with cheap bedmates and he gets drunk. Peter joins him when his vision begins to blur. “You have to stop doing this to Thor.”Loki stares at him blankly.“He can protect himself,” Peter says.





	Blood Love

It happens mostly on accident. Loki stalks the man, dainty and suited in Italian that would make Iron Man jealous, but _lethal._ Loki has seen what this man can do, has watched Thor limp into their bed, bloody and bruised and broken.

Loki told him once, _just do it_ , but Thor had smiled wanly at him and said, “We do not kill if we can help it.”

Loki knows it’s true. Has seen Thor rip a man’s skull from his spine with his bare hands. But only ever in the heat of battle, when a life is immediately at stake. Loki knows his own hands are bloody. Always. Tonight will be no different.

He follows the man down an alley, traps him between dumpsters, and then steps back, confused at the sharp pain beside his ribs. At the warm liquid that coats his fingers when he touches his side. He looks at the man, and for a second green eyes sneer back at him. And then the man crumples, falls in a heap of flesh and tissue and Loki stares at a man made of iron.

He snarls at him. “That kill was mine.”

The suit shrugs as much as metal can and says “He hurt Peter. He was never yours.

Loki thinks of all the marks that blipped away before he could get to them and as he exhales, a slow and pained _oh_ , he understands.

\--

It doesn’t happen too often, Tony moving in on his kill. Loki is fast, is silent, and Tony is clanking horror. But occasionally Loki bleeds from the shadow only to find his mark splayed before him in a mess of shattered bone and shredded muscle.

It rankles him. He’s the god here, no human should ever best him.

He doesn’t exactly change his mind, arms busted and frostbite setting in. But in the middle of winter, when Tony finishes the job, when he drags, quite literally, Loki back to the tower, the god thinks _we can work together._

When he can move his fingers again, he writes down a number, a schedule, and an address. Tony picks it up with a raised brow and Loki huffs out, “One of the few places I can’t slip into. But you can walk right through the door.”

“What did he do?” Tony asks, but Loki is already slipping away, and Tony doesn’t really care.

\--

Peter is curled on the couch, half aware and temporarily blind in one eye when Tony hands him the photo. It looks… “He’s a kid, Tony,” Loki says. He doesn’t exactly have a problem with it. He’s done worse. But Tony usually has limits.

Tony cuts his eyes at Peter. “Not dead. Just maimed.”

Loki looks at Peter again, at the stiffness in his posture, even curled against the couch. He doesn’t want to know what this kid did to Tony Stark’s prodigy. “Want proof?” He jokes. Tony’s brows contemplate it and Loki shudders. He _really_ doesn’t want to know.

But two nights later the teen is dumped outside of the hospital, babbling nonsense and bleeding from his nose. There’s a stack of photos dumped on Tony’s door. Enough that if he wanted, the genius could ruin the kid without even doing anything himself.  

\--

“Scale of one to six,” Loki demands. They’ve been arguing for hours as Thor and Peter do whatever it is they do at soup kitchens and kitten bowls.

“That’s not-” Tony pinches the bridge of his nose. “Loki, it’s not even a logical scale.”

The knife whistles almost silently past Tony’s ear narrowly misses a big monitor. “One. To. Six.”

Tony doesn’t cave often, but he’s tired and Loki is being petulant. “Fine. Six is the highest.”

For the first time all night they agree. They haggle at what the rankings mean, at what earns them. One they agree is no harm. Little bit of fright, some well-placed threats. Loki wants to break a finger, but he agrees to save that for a Two.

Three is where it gets fun, where they get to draw blood. The nasties, those who hurt others, who steal, but who don’t do too much harm.

Six is Loki’s favorite. Slow and painful, messy. Breaking and ripping _revenge_ like nothing these humans have ever seen. He gets to make them crazy, gets to make them suffer.

Tony doesn’t do sixes. Doesn’t like them, but he slips them to Loki when the trickster is getting twitchy, when his guilt and demons claw up his throat and he _needs_ to break something.

Tony likes fours though, a little breaking a little blood. Messages and threats, but nothing permanent.

\--

Tony rarely does more than pass Loki information. He doesn’t particularly like the god, which, fair. But they work well together. Slipping past walls and security. Invisible on camera, untraceable on the death tables.

Once though, just once, Tony comes to him, pale and shaking and _drenched_. “Kill him. Make it,” he swallows heavily, “six, Loki. Six.”

Tony has never asked for a six before, the highest he’s ever gone was a five. Some fat jerk Loki’d smoozed up to and poisoned.

He nods. For a moment, a single second, he thinks to reach out to Tony. To, grip his shoulder, or some nonsense. Instead he asks, “Is Peter okay?”

Because only Peter could inspire this in Tony. Everything they do, the blood on their hands, it’s for Peter and Thor.

“He won’t-” Tony looks ready to vomit. “He won’t let me go after him. Like-” Tony gets quiet fast, when the knife nicks his Adam’s apple.

They don’t talk about her. The one who almost broke Thor. Loki had _begged_ his brother.

It’s not like Peter and Thor aren’t aware. Not like they haven’t patched knuckles and cheeks, washed blood out of shirts and jeans. Loki thinks Peter must be okay, will survive whatever happened. Otherwise there’s no way Tony would let Loki handle this.

It’s not like they haven’t seen the bodies on the news. But they don’t know. Not really, about the bodies that never show up. About nights spent in bars. About the stains on Tony and Loki’s souls that won’t ever be washed clean.

Loki hopes, prays when he’s feeling holy, that there is no afterlife.

His slate can’t be cleaned.

\--

Loki kills the man. Smears his blood across downtown and scatters his bones through Central Park. He burns his house, his accounts, and he considers taking the family down too, but he can’t do that. Tony wouldn’t ask him too, but Thor wouldn’t forgive him if he did. The daughters are innocent, can’t be blamed for their father.

Thor still frowns when Loki slips into their room. When he strips down and climbs into a pool-sized bath. “Did you?” Thor asks.

“Brother, haven’t you learned not to ask questions you don’t want the answer to?” Loki asks, bored. He trembles though, feels like him might vomit. Thor doesn’t answer him. He doesn’t leave the room either. He grabs a cloth and carefully begins wiping down Loki’s shoulders.

“Why?” He asks. And he’s asked before. He asks often. Probably more often than Peter. Peter is smart enough not to want the answers.

Loki looks at Thor, stares into his eyes hard, heavy, _exhausted._ “Because you wouldn’t.”

Thor never asks again.

\--

Once, in a bar stalking a boss it’ll take both of them to end, Loki kisses Tony. The music is loud, the drugs sweet, and Tony is sweaty and grinding against him, blending in.

Loki does this. He kisses strangers and friends and enemies. He likes it, the way they taste on his tongue. Wrong and bitter and punishing. Tony bites at his mouth, digs his fingers into Loki’s jaw, twist and bruises.

Tony taste like ash, strangely. Ash and the metal he’s so damned fond of, and a bit like the scotch he drinks.

They kiss, and Loki curls his fingers into a silk shirt, tugs and a tie the color of Peter’s eyes. There’s a savage, feral hunger in Tony’s eyes, and it’s only their mark literally bumping into them that stops Loki from ripping the silk from his shoulders.

The mark lives that night.

Tony doesn’t flee, but he doesn’t linger either.

\--

Peter finds Loki three weeks after the kiss. His eyes are wide, dark circles underneath, but there’s a firm set to his lips. “You kissed him.” It’s not an accusation. It’s not a question.

Loki spins a knife, flips it, lets it pierce the table. “He kissed back.”

Peter flinches, and Loki smiles at him, feral and cruel. But Peter’s spine is a straight line. Quick as a blink Loki’s hands are webbed to the table and his knife is at his throat. “Tricksters should know better than to play with toys that aren’t theirs.” Peter says quiet. His voice is steady and his hands firm, but there’s a fluttering pulse in his neck that tells Loki he’s angry. And afraid.

Loki tilts his head. “You know what he does, what he is capable of.”

“I know what he does for me, yes,” Peter says quietly. “I know what you do for Thor. But the difference is what you do _to_ Thor. What Tony doesn’t do to me.” His hands clench into fist, white knuckles and Loki bets his palms have red crescents in them. “You kissed what is mine Loki. You tried to take from me. Tony isn’t,” here Peter swallows hard, shuts his eyes to gather his thoughts. “He isn’t you, Loki. Things like that, kissing, sex, he may act otherwise but they _mean_ something to him. I don’t want to let you hurt him. I don’t want him in your bed, in your games.”

“He will come to me, eventually,” Loki says. He says it quiet, but intensely. “Once, he will. Because he’ll feel dirty and broken and _wrong_.”

“I know,” Peter answers him. He slumps against the booth hard and looks away from Loki for a long time. His hands unclench, but he rubs his thumbs against his his forefingers and Loki can see the raw skin breaking. “And I’ll be there, watching. I’ll put him back together. But how will you help Thor? Hmm? How many will settle into your sheets. How many times will you make Thor clean you up, before you give him what he deserves?”  

Peter leaves, and it takes Loki far too long to unweb himself.

\--

Loki is careful with Tony after that. If the Iron Man notices, if he cares, he keeps it to himself.

But Loki is also cruel after that. With the bodies he stacks high on the streets, and the bodies he traps between his sheets.

Thor leaves their room, leaves Loki to his toys. But Peter was right, in that he is there, always, to clean Loki up. To hold him as he screams through memories and nightmares. He wraps Loki in his arms as he trembles, rocks him to a near forgotten lullaby and presses kisses to his temple.

When Loki vomits, Thor cleans that up too, and doesn’t say anything when Loki comes back three days later, bloody and bruised and _starving_ for Thor.

The sex is rough, is bruising, is over too fast, and Thor’s grip on his wrist tightens, begs, when Loki slips away.

\--

The next mark is too obvious. Loki is too obvious. It’s everywhere, it’s on camera, and Loki vibrates with hate for the eyes that gleam back at him over the grainy footage.

Tony is at his side, is already buying his freedom, and Loki hates the rich metal man for it.

“There are more,” Loki tells him, when the noise has faded, and they are alone. “He had friends. And they know our boys.”

Tony flinches for the first time since he watched Loki beat the man’s head against the wall on the footage. “Then we will fix it.”

“If we don’t,” Loki begins, remembering the images that even he wanted purged from his mind.

“We will,” Tony says with a certainty Loki envies.

\--

They do. It takes six months. The skin around Loki’s nails might always be dark red, and Tony drinks whisky like its water, but they get them.

The bodies don’t exist anymore. They are dust in space. Memories no one keeps. They don’t exist on earth anymore.

Loki celebrates by taking Tony to bed.

It’s not an accident, not exactly. But it isn’t planned either.

They’re in Stark’s bedroom, wearing pants covered in mud and human remains. Tony’s tie is loose about his neck and Loki reaches for it. Tony grabs his wrist, quick and tight, and Loki stares at him with a dead look. Horror stares back at him. The kind neither of them can even drink away.

“Let me,” he purrs. Because this Loki can do, lose himself in someone else. “You need this. It’s better if it’s me, and not Peter.” Because what they’re about to do? It won’t be beautiful or soft or gentle or kind.

Loki leans forward, mouths at the stubble on Toni’s jaw, and when the man doesn’t shove him away, he makes quick work of the tie. He makes quick work of all of the clothing, shoves Tony back onto the bed and pretends he doesn’t notice the way Tony flinches.

They’re both sore, but Loki can give him a different kind of ache. He leaves a trail of marks down Tony’s neck, across his collarbones. Bites at his nipples and licks at the curls on his belly. Tony closes his eyes, twist his fingers into Loki’s long locks.

He’s not imagining Peter, Loki knows. His hands are almost cruel against his scalp and Loki can’t help but purr against his thigh. Something creaks, and Tony stiffens, but Loki mouths at his balls, sucks one into his mouth to distract him.

He blows Tony, fast and efficient, and then lays on his stomach, legs spread. Tony knows what he needs, and he works just as quickly. One hand is pressed to the small of Loki’s back, the other works two fingers into him too quickly to really feel good.

It’s fast, messy, and Loki exist on a plane somewhere between pain and not quite pleasure. It never feels good, when it isn’t Thor. And Tony is taking out his rage, his self-loathing, his anguish in Loki. He fucks into him, bites at the nape of his neck, and his nails leave crescents on Loki’s hips.

Loki comes first, stutters out against Tony’s sheets. Tony doesn’t slow his pace, even when Loki cries out, when he’s too sensitive. He begs though, tells Tony _more_ , because he’s not repenting. 

Tony finally comes, stuttering and broken, and falls against Loki’s back, too heavy and too hot.

Loki twist his head, and he can see eyes staring from the doorway. A mouth in a sad line, but a knowing. Loki smiles at Peter. He slips from under Tony who is curled against the sheets, shaking, and he walks naked to the spider-boy. Loki kisses his temple and whispers, “Fix him. Love him like I can’t. Like he loves you.”

He doesn’t tell the boy to bleed for Tony. Because that is why Tony bleeds. So the spider-boy doesn’t have to. It would be wrong to ask Peter to do that for Tony, to negate all that Tony does to protect him. Even if the hand at his throat, the knife at his ribs say Peter could if he chose to.

“Touch what is mine again, and you’ll know just how deadly a spider can be,” Peter whispers. Then he pads into the room and curls around Tony, whispering silky nonsense into his ear. Loki leaves when Tony begins to sob, when Peter takes what Loki wasn’t given. He’s never heard Tony mewl that way before, and he’s surprised to find he doesn’t want to hear it ever again.

\--

Loki goes home to Thor and he doesn’t let his brother speak. He strips him of his clothes, still smelling of Tony, still leaking Tony between his thighs, and he’s _gentle_. He presses Thor to the mattress, kisses every inch of him, works him till his sweaty and begging and has his fingers twisted tight in Loki’s hair.

It hurts, how tight his fist is, but it hurts in the best way. He presses Thor’s knees to his chest, kisses him as he enters him, and he takes his time. Works a slow and steady rhythm that keeps Thor on the edge, that doesn’t let him release.

When he’s close, too close to really be cognizant, he cups Thor’s face in his palms. “I love you,” he says, quiet, intent, with everything he has. Thor shudders his release then, and Loki follows quickly, starburst behind his eyes.

When he can breathe again, when he can see and focus, Thor is gone. He stays gone for a week, and when he returns, he stays away from Loki’s hands.

Tony is never around him without Peter. The boy tags along even when they’re conducting business, and it gets under Loki’s skin. He itches with a need to swat the arachnid. Peter’s hands are all over Tony. There’s always a bite on his jaw.

Tony is lighter though, freer. He moves with his old grace and his marks are never above a three. He doesn’t need Loki; the god realizes suddenly.

Whatever happened that night, whatever Peter said or did to him, he proved himself. Tony doesn’t need Loki’s help protecting Peter, because Peter can protect himself.

\--

Loki leaves them at a party, and he goes to a seedy bar with cheap bedmates and he gets drunk. Peter joins him when his vision begins to blur. “You have to stop doing this to Thor.”

Loki stares at him blankly.

“He can protect himself,” Peter says.

“It doesn’t matter anymore. He won’t,” Loki swallows. He can’t find the words to explain the giant gap growing between himself and the god of thunder.

Peter shrugs a shoulder, flicks a wrist in the air. Tony saunters past them and sits two tables to behind him. Peter hands Loki a small device and motions to his ear.

_“What do you want, Tony?”_

_“I know you know what happened.”_

_“You’re not the first one Loki has seduced.”_

_“I might be the last, though. He left first, that night. Peter was there, standing in the door. And Loki could’ve made a show of it. Would’ve had it been different. But he did what he needed to do, and he left. Went home to you.”_

There’s a small noise, almost a sob. Peter gets up and leaves Loki listening to a conversation that isn’t his.

_“He had too, Thor. You know this. He had to burn the last of it from his system.”_

_“Burn what?”_

_“The guilt. Tony and him? They share a dark thread of fate. And Loki had to know, had to see if he could taste it in someone else. He had to know he wasn’t alone in a soul that damaged.”_

_“It wasn’t what he wanted though, Thor. You should know that. We fit like broken glass.”_

_“What are you to him?”_  It’s said so quiet, so broken, Loki’s heart shatters and he surprised the whole damn world doesn’t tremble.

_“I’m his brother. But only because you are so much more to him.”_

Spider and Iron leave, two brothers sitting in opposite booths. Thor approaches him first, slowly, quietly. He sits beside Loki and waits, and when Loki breaks, when his shoulders shake and he can’t breathe for the sobs trapped in his lungs, he holds him tight. “I love you, Loki,” Thor says against his temple.

\-- 

Tony and Loki, they don’t stop. They’ll never stop. Because Thor and Peter will never start. And there are certain things the murderers can’t stand to lose.

But they go home at night, separately and untempted. They let their lovers clean them, hold them, sing to them. They’re picker about the bodies. Only the ones that _really_ deserve it. Because they trust Thunder and Spider. Because they know they _can_ protect themselves, even if they choose to keep their hands clean.

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                           


End file.
